Is This How You Adult?http://isthishowyouadult.com
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 14:51:21 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5http://isthishowyouadult.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-10336772_879355757393_8738309382745443529_n-32x32.jpgIs This How You Adult?http://isthishowyouadult.com
3232The Never Ending Winterhttp://isthishowyouadult.com/the-never-ending-winter/
http://isthishowyouadult.com/the-never-ending-winter/#respondThu, 08 Mar 2018 02:37:54 +0000http://isthishowyouadult.com/?p=107Hello is anyone out there?!

This is Gabrielle, today is day 455 of winter, I am writing you from Philadelphia.
I don’t know if I can go on, things are becoming bleak, and I am starting to lose faith. I fear that I will never see the sun again! I fear that spring is never coming and I will never feel the sun on my skin again!

Okay guys, I know that was a bit dramatic! But in all seriousness, my seasonal affective disorder is in full swing and I fear my light therapy lamp is starting to lose its power over my soul.I swear to you that I run/survive on caffeine, sugar (cookies and brownies), and SUN! Lots and lots of SUN!

Today’s struggle started with an impending snow storm. I work as a therapist at a residential facility and have worked for hospitals for years before this and I have always operated under the notion that when it snows I still have work. It sucks, but it is life, when you are considered an essential employee!

So this morning, I got up, fought with Leo to go outside to use the bathroom, got dressed (yes, I put on my new favorite pair of gray joggers don’t judge me) packed a lunch, put on my snow boots and cleaned off my car.All the while, I was internally crying that I just want the sun.

I drove slowly to work this morning hating life/people while listening to NPR, just like I do every morning, but 20-40mph slower then normal. Somewhere along the way I switched the channel to hear Toto’s Africa!This made me sad/happy/angry/nostalgic all at the same time, because all I want is to be at the shore for no shower happy hour at The Whitebrier or at Sunday Funday at The Ocean Drive. Cue, more internal tears and whining as I pulled into work.

I want to throw this out there, I only started working here last summer, and this place while I love the work I do, they kinda suck at communicating on what is expected of us. So I thought from the email I received yesterday that I had to be at work today, but when I got in the office no one was there! I swear, I was one of 4 therapists that showed up! We have ten therapists on staff! This increased my anger/annoyance for the day/my employer. But, I digress, I did my job, I saw my patients, I had good sessions with them and I got some notes done.

Okay, okay, okay… I lied a little… Here’s how my morning really went in the office! I got in and I complained to my co-worker about being there and poor communication, went to rounds, rolled my eyes, went back to my office, read some emails, got annoyed, rolled my eyes again, started to reply to said annoying email, stopped. Turned on my sun therapy lamp and drank some coffee while staring at the beach photo.My office has NO windows! I am convinced an office with no windows is cruel and unusual punishment and I swear this is driving some of my current insanity!

Anyway back to my morning, I went to talk to nursing about an issue, went back to my office, sent a parent an email, turned on music (I am currently listening to Big Little Lies playlist on Spotify), drank more coffee, sent a personal email, talked to another co-worker, texted with my 10 girlfriends in a group text and then around this point I decided I need to get the F*ck out of Philly!

I then spent 30+ minutes Googling cheap flights from Philadelphia to pretty much anywhere that it is currently 75+ degrees outside. By this point my first patient came for her appointment so I stopped my search, but I was distracted. I saw my patients, had a conversation with my supervisor, called a parent, wrote some notes and then headed home. All the while the thought of a vacation has been in the back of my mind. By the time I left the snow was coming down hard! It took me 40 minutes to get home (I live 15 minutes away!).When I got home all I was thinking about was vacation and when I was younger how much fun snow days were because we would go out and drink and sled in the snow (high school)! The rest of my day consisted of walking Leo, eating lunch, taking a work call, Googling more vacation places, snuggling Leo and then opening a bottle of wine (Rose to be exact because I’m feeling super basic today).

The moral of the story is I’m over the winter! I still haven’t booked a trip, but I am going to! I need some suggestions!I don’t want to be all negative so here are some positives about this afternoon, I baked some cookies, drank my favorite wine, snuggled my pup, texted my girlfriends and watched Harry Potter. Overall it was an okay day! But spring needs to come soon, I’m just saying!

P.S. there are only 79 more days until Memorial Day weekend! If anyone was wondering/counting!

Today is Rare Disease day, so I have decided to talk about my rare disease! I have Guillain Barre Syndrome!

Many people have never heard of Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS), it is a rare and serious auto immune disorder that is incurable. For many it goes undiagnosed since it is so rare. It can be onset by the flu shot, a viral infection, under cooked chicken, or bacteria that can be found in lake water. Your immune system attacks the sheath of your nerves leaving you paralyzed. Some cases are mild and some result in complete paralysis or death! There is NO Cure for GBS only plasma treatments (IVIG) that try to help slow the progress of the attacking of the sheath of your nerves. Flare ups become a part of your life and the scary thought of a complete relapse is there everyday. I thank God everyday for my amazing doctors who caught this right away and started me on my treatment before things got worse!

I want to share my story with you, when I was 28 years old my whole life changed, until November 2014 I was healthy my whole life. But in November 2014 I started to just not feel well and my life changed overnight. I started to have pins and needles in my hands, then my feet, I was tired, I had muscle craps, then I started to have back pain that was the worst pain of my life and finally I started to have trouble walking. I thought I had just hurt my back doing something around the house so I made an appointment to see a chiropractor. I went a few times but it wasn’t helping I was getting worse. On the advice of my work wife Laura I made a sick appointment at my primary care doctor’s office, because as she put it “this is not just back pain its something else”. Actually what she said to me was “you look like you are walking with a shit in your pants! I am not walking around with you anymore, you need to go to the doctor! If you don’t make the appointment I am going to make it for you!” (Thanks Laura!! You saved my life!)

So I had an appointment for “back pain” and the next day I went to the appointment and from there I was told they thought I had Guillain Barré syndrome but everything else needed to be ruled out! I cried as they listed all of the things that could be wrong. I’ve worked in the medical field for years and knew the seriousness of each issue that they listed (tumor, brain hemorrhage, stroke, etc.). I was sent to the ER, from my doctor’s office and because the seriousness of it all was not setting in I told them I could walk the block to the ER they laughed at me and told me they called a cab. I sobbed on the phone to my work wife and told her to meet me at the ER 4 blocks from our office! I also called my roommate Shelly who jumped in a cab and came right away too. I could barely walk but hobbled into the ER where we waited for hours to be admitted to the hospital. I don’t remember this but I was told the longer we were there the more I slurred my words. As we sat in the ER they ran no tests but took blood and kept telling me I couldn’t eat or drink anything and they couldn’t give me anything for the pain. I was annoyed but kept thinking at least they are admitting me. If it wasn’t for Shelly being with me I think I would have lost it.

The next day I met my neurologist Dr. Sami Khella, he was amazing! I was started on IVIG before my results came back, because he didn’t want things to get worse. I went through the spinal tap (words can’t describe this pain) and from there it was confirmed that I in fact had Guillain Barré syndrome. I did 5 days of IVIG, it was awful! My veins couldn’t handle it and collapsed, and my IVs needed to be changed daily. I was a pin cushion!

I struggled my whole stay at the hospital. I struggled to walk, to bath and clothe myself, to make my hands work, through pain that I can’t even explain. The one thing that made my time in the hospital bearable was that I was never without visitors, whether it was my family, my friends, or my then boyfriend (now fiance), I always had someone with me! My doctor recommended that I be sent to a rehab for physical therapy but because I am strong-willed and determined I proved that I could be discharged home! I thank God I had the support of an amazing roommate and friends, who made this possible, I couldn’t imagine going to a rehab then. Looking back now it may have been better if I had gone because it was hard being home. I had a lot of pain and could not do much for myself!

The first year was rough! I went through a lot of physical therapy, 3 days a week for months! I struggled with sleep and with nightmares! I would wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare almost nightly. With my heart racing and covered in a cold sweat. What was I dreaming about? It’s slightly different each time but either someone is knocking on my hospital door for a blood draw, or I was having pain; feeling like I was being stabbed, or that I was struggling to walk again and sometimes I just wouldn’t remember what I was dreaming about but I just wouldn’t feel right. Once I was up I struggled with falling back to sleep, because my heart was racing, and I felt like my body was crawling with pins and needles. My pins and needles are/were worse when I am tired, late at night when I’m trying to fall asleep and early in the morning or when I am overly hot or cold. It still drives me crazy.

The list of things GBS had taken from me that first 6 months was endless. Before I got GBS I ran every day; literally and figuratively. I’m late all the time so I always seem to be in a rush. But I ran for exercise, to work, to have drinks & dinners with friends, to events. To sum it up I was always busy. At one point before GBS I was working two jobs, was in school and had an active social schedule. The first year, my life looked very different then what I was “use too”. I could barely work my one full-time job. I couldn’t run, walk for long distances or time, wear high heels, or see my friends as often as I use to because I was too tired and weak to be able to do those things. I took my days hour by hour, listening to my body, and how I am feeling. Some days I could barely make it through 5 hours of work without wanting to go home and climb into bed because I was exhausted and was in pain. On those days forget about the extras; cleaning the house, taking a yoga class, going out with friends, I just couldn’t do it. When I had social obligations I learned I had to plan, to make sure I got enough sleep, hydrated, took my meds, made sure I had extra meds with me and to be mindful and listen to my body. As soon as I started to not feeling well, I would sit, I would take a break, and shortly thereafter I would leave. The next day I would recover by lying on my couch and doing very little. Again, before all of this I didn’t stop. Before all of this I was a night owl, during the beginning of my recovery I was in bed by 9, and I needed 9-10 hours of sleep a night to function the next day.

To say I miss my old life somedays is an understatement and I struggled everyday to get use to a new “normal”. A little over 3 years later I still cry somedays, especially if I am feeling like I can’t cope or I’m feeling overwhelmed. At the beginning I forget stuff all of the time, I struggled at work, I struggled to keep up walking, I was angry because I am told to stop doing things I loved, I was frustrated because I can’t do the things I use to do. These were all reasons that I cried and I just wanted to be me again. And I guess at the end of the day I cried because I didn’t not know what my future held. I was nervous about getting on with my life, of starting the next chapter by bettering myself with a career move or enrolling in school because back then I can’t do more then what I was doing at that time without being tired. I didn’t know if I would ever get rid of that feeling of not feeling well, or the pins and needles or nightmares or the not knowing if I would be the me that I was or if I had to get use to this new me. At the end of the day to say GBS has changed my life dramatically, is an understatement.

For a long time, I felt like it changed my life in a negative way but I started to change my outlook on the situation. I began to start feeling that while it was not “fair”, I was one of the lucky ones! I was walking, I was trying and I was surviving. I choose to not take for grated small things, and to stop waiting for the “one day”. I have taken huge leaps in my life quitting my stable & secure job (that I hated, it was crushing my soul) and went back to school to get my Master’s degree in Social Work. I graduated this past May and passed my boards! I got a job doing something that I find purpose in and I love doing! And through all of this I am just trying to live my best life, one day at a time and one step at a time! Because as corny as it sounds, it could all be taken from me tomorrow, because tomorrow is not guaranteed!

]]>http://isthishowyouadult.com/what-its-like-to-have-a-rare-disease/feed/0Get Your Side Hustle On!http://isthishowyouadult.com/get-side-hustle/
http://isthishowyouadult.com/get-side-hustle/#respondMon, 29 Jan 2018 14:30:07 +0000http://isthishowyouadult.com/?p=54Since I can remember I’ve had a “side hustle”. When I was little I sold pink lemonade and Keebler Rainbow chocolate chip cookies on the corner of our street, in my neighbors yard, since we lived on a dead end street. I also use to leave my box of money in my lemonade stand over night and would go back a few days later and find it. I would say that was my first “side hustle”, back then I didn’t need money but I wanted it! As I got older I took on other “side hustles”, because if you wanted something you had to work for it in my house. Before I could have a job legally I was working at our family business, doing chores around the house and babysitting, or house sitting for my neighbors to earn money. I actually had a real job the summer I was going into 7th grade. I worked on the boardwalk in Wildwood at Seaport Aquarium, selling tickets to families that wanted to come in and see and pet a live shark! I loved it and felt proud to have my own money and to be able to buy things without having to ask my parents for it, because money was tight.

As I got older I continued to have jobs, but I always had a second source of income. If I only had one job, I’d feel stagnant and bored. In high school, I worked as a lifeguard, but taught private swim lessons in the morning, or worked at a daycare and babysat on the weekends. Why would a kid be working this much you might ask?! Well, because I did competitive cheerleading at a private gym and to be honest with you, it was expensive. My parents paid for me to go to Catholic school and they said they wouldn’t pay for me to cheer, if I wanted to cheer, I had to pay for it! Well, I loved cheering, it was my life back then, so I said I would figure it out because I loved it so much and it made me happy.

I started cheering in 3rd grade and moved to competitive cheerleading in 5th grade. Competitive cheerleading is/was expensive, you pay for gym fees, and uniforms, and tumbling classes, and completion fees and traveling fees, and you are traveling and at a competition pretty much every weekend. It added up quickly so, I worked two jobs and I participated in every fundraiser possible, hustling! Cheering gave me the foundation to learn that anything worth having is worth working hard for. I carried this drive to hustle and succeed to college and then into my 20s. I’ve found working 40+ hours a week at a 9-5 job and then killing it at night and on the weekends became my norm. And to be honest with you, anytime I “slow down” I feel like I should be doing more.

Why I’m Not Alone

In doing a little research, and thinking in general about my friends, I found a survey from CareerBuilder. The survey found that 29% of workers have a side hustle, 44% of those ages 25-34 and 39% of those 18-24 have a side gig. This survey also found that 30% of health care workers have a side hustle (Surprise I work in health care!). The survey also found that workers who have a side hustle are more passionate about their day jobs (39%) than their side hustles (36%).

Don’t get me wrong, I love my day job! I love being a therapist, I love helping people through their shit! But it is DRAINING and at the end of the day I find that I want to be creative! This is where my side hustle comes in! About a year and a half ago I started selling LuLaRoe, it was fun, I got to be creative and in general pretty easy. To be honest, over time it became more work then I expected. I’ve stepped back in the past few months and have been thinking about what I want to do with it. I feel like I am drowning in LuLaRoe, and I feel like the market has been taken over by way bigger fish then I every wanted to be. But, I love the side hustle! I love talking to women, helping them find a piece that they love, or helping them therapeutically love their bodies a little more in clothes that help them feel comfortable and beautiful! So I’m not sure yet if I’m giving it up or just want to cut back.

In the meantime, I’ve add a second side hustle to my plate mainly because, I love wine and want free wine! It does help also that the company donates 50% of their profits to partner nonprofits!!! I became a Cause Entrepreneur for ONEHOPE, produced by Rob Mondavi, Jr. out of Napa. As I said, every bottle makes an impact by donating HALF of the profits to partner nonprofits and when people host a tasting, a 10% donation is made to a local cause of their choice.

So there it is, I love a good side hustle. I love having my own side hustle, and supporting those that also have their own side hustle! I have found some of my favorite products from women selling direct market products or just from their creative Etsy shops and blogs! So friends get out there and GET YOUR SIDE HUSTLE ON and shop small and direct, because it helps someone GET THEIR SIDE HUSTLE ON!!